


a monarch's reign

by todreaminscarlet



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4344647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todreaminscarlet/pseuds/todreaminscarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of drabbles about the Chronicles' young rulers</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> {Lucy Pevensie, Queen of Narnia}
> 
> Part of a series on tumblr: Narnian Monarchs ((http://adaperturamlibri.tumblr.com/tagged/narnian-monarchs))

She is never first–not until Narnia. She is the youngest and the smallest, the one the others must protect from the reality of their shattered, collapsing world. But then she crawls through a wardrobe into a land of magic and faith and defeated neediness that mesmerizes and breaks her young heart. It is a world that she discovers first, a land that needs her, wants her (and that she so desperately wants in return). **  
**

She walks through the wardrobe a child, with a child’s heart and a child’s faith and a child’s determination to see past the cold frost of winter to the practical needs of a land of magic.

As the Narnian air matures them, her siblings let her (this child desperately sent away by a teary-eyed-mother from the crashing horror of bombed out London) wander the bloodied battle ground, healing her subjects-to-be at Aslan’s command. Her hands are kind, her face young, her eyes older, but as she looks at the soggy ground and waving trees, her heart is strong.

It’s a magical land, this Narnia, but it is not impossible or improbable, it simply is, ruled by a wild lion from across the sea; a lion who knows when he is needed (who knows that  _she_  needed this land, this faith, this Aslan).

As she grows, she sees her subjects’ struggle, sees the pain of life written on their whiskered faces, and she walks fearlessly among them (one of them) with a dagger by her side and a elixer of life in her hand. They are Aslan’s creatures, and she is Aslan’s Queen, and she will serve him (from thankfulness, from pride) by serving those that come before her throne.

The Valiant, they call her, (the Lion’s Daughter). The one who walks among them with determination and kindness and humility; the one who never ceases to see the magic humming in the trees.

(One day, she walks out of the wardrobe a woman, with a woman’s heart and a woman’s faith. She is back in a world of muted color and cold destruction, and its faithlessness squeezes her heart until she feels she can no longer breathe. But her subjects called her Valiant, she reminds herself, and so she squares her childish shoulders, and wakes up every morning to see the sun peek over the horizon.)

(She is always a Queen of Narnia).


	2. King Peter the Magnificent

When he arrives in Narnia he is already not quite a child. This melting army of weak, hopeful creatures and an unspecific prophecy is not the first unasked-for burden resting on his boyish shoulders; this is not his first battle, his first duty. He knows duty; he comprehends it with the natural understanding that the best oldest brothers have and recognizes its cold, grasping tendrils wrapping around his shoulders to surround his warm, beating heart.

After he comes to Narnia, his brother hates him, centuries-old creatures stare at him as if he is their king, and it is a burden too large for a boy who is not quite a man.

His brother leaves, and he fears Ed might be dead. Peter knows he has failed (failed to complete the most important task of all) and it is a bitterness that does not soon leave his heart.

But then Aslan comes, and Ed stands in front of him, and the feeling of seeing Ed’s chest rise with every breath and seeing his eyes look into Peter’s without resentment is such a pure joy Peter thinks nothing will ever compare.  

He has done what he must, and he has failed, but Aslan has arrived and blessed him (with a title, with a brother), and so he accepts his blessing and its steep price with a loyal, steady heart. He stands straight again, his siblings by his side, and he goes to fight a war that is not quite his first with a shaking hand that does what it must.

In the quiet moments before he races forward into a battle from which he wants to run away, he closes his eyes and feels the warm Narnian air whisper across his face. Aslan has commanded him (and has saved them before), and this is a duty he accepts, because his loyal heart has accepted it before. And so, because he knows the value of doing what he must, he raises his sword. His siblings are behind him, cloaked in iron and steel, their small fingers grasping weapons too small, and the knowledge that they will never leave him comforts him (it terrifies him even more). And yet, because he will do what he must, he yells, and forward they run.

(Aslan is in his mind and his siblings are in his heart, and it is enough to make him fight. He will never know how he looks to the creatures around him: this Boy-King galloping forward on a white horse, his sword glinting in the sun, determination on his brow.)

He embraces this duty, and it deepens into fondness and loyalty. Without thinking, over the years and through battles, Aslan’s steep price becomes a precious joy. To defend, to fight, to love, to honor–it might be a duty, but it is a well-worn duty, and the strong shoulders of a man who is no longer a child carry it well.

It makes him Magnificent.


	3. King Edmund the Just

> After the battle, he has a crown and a kingdom, but he is not a king. He is a child with a sword and an aching heart (because he knows what he is: a  _traitor_ , only alive because a lion took his place).
> 
> He is too many things for a boy of his years—a brother, a fighter, a soldier, a traitor, a  _king_ (he recognizes his life is no longer his own). He now bears the burden of knowledge—the heavy understanding that he was saved for a purpose (to fulfill a prophecy, to guide a country…to support his siblings for as long as he lives, for it is they he betrayed most of all).
> 
> It is a long process—this  _kingship_. It is years of practicing and training and learning over and over again. It is days of bruised limbs and heavy swords; it is nights of tired eyes and worn parchment. But he does it.
> 
> He teaches himself Narnian laws and writes new ones; he leads armies into battle and becomes his brother’s steady right hand. He allows justice and mercy to soothe his soul, and he learns to carry his crown with a calm and balanced grace.
> 
> _King Edmund the Just_ , his subjects say. It is the title he  _earns_ through years of toil and exhaustion and devotion and joy, through the painful remembrance of his betrayal and the awful awareness of the power of mercy.
> 
> King Edmund the Just (oh the beautiful irony).

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The text is from a tumblr post with a character aesthetic. You can find it here: http://adaperturamlibri.tumblr.com/post/117965688732/king-edmund-the-just-after-the-battle-he-has-a


	4. Queen Susan the Gentle

She’s just a sister.  

She’s a girl who wants her mum, who wants wars to end, who wants death to stop haunting her young, trembling limbs.  

The animals are talking, and the trees are moving, and her siblings have almost died (she’s lost track of how many times.) She is harsh in her responses and clumsy in her movements (she’s so tired and bloody and dirty–so  _overwhelmed_  with the oddity that is this land they call Narnia.)  

They all stare at them, these children, like they have the answers (they don’t, she wants to scream, but she already sees that they won’t listen).  

Those early days are long days, but Susan is nothing if not pragmatic, and she grits her teeth and sets them all to work. She forces herself to smile in thanks, and smile in joy, and smile in grief and slowly, oh so slowly, finds that the oddity becomes normality and that frustration turns to peace.

She fights and defends and smiles through the years. She teaches herself to walk with poise and to interact with a unperturbed grace.  

The Gentle, her subjects call her. They tell stories ‘round campfires of the queen of ruthless kindness; the one whose smiles disguise a spine of steel; the one who waits to speak and then issues uncompromising decrees.

_Queen Susan the Gentle_ –she laughs when she hears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The text is from a character aesthetic post on tumblr, which you can find here:  
> http://adaperturamlibri.tumblr.com/post/122554049812/queen-susan-the-gentle-shes-just-a-sister


	5. Aravis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Archenland is not home, not at first. It's a land of cool earnestness so far removed from everything she had known. She will not admit it to Shasta, but she misses Calormen--misses the cool silks and desert sands and elegant, twisted poetry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aravis this time!

She envies Shasta here. He is uncertain how to carry himself, unconfident in his newfound status as the lost prince and the future king, but even with his lingering awkwardness and his lack of knowledge, this is _home_ to him. This is a reunion, a returning, a restoration of all that should have been and that now can be. He _belongs_ in this land of cool winds and rolling hills, _connects_ with this land of genteel earnestness and of plain honest speech.  

 

She doesn’t.

 

She is the refugee, the foreigner, all dark-skin and speech too superfluous for this sincere land. She is _different_ , separated, the reminder of a ruthless invasion and of losses that still echo through this stone fortress in which she dwells. She is the runner, the brave and the foolish one all at once, the prideful child of a land of prestige and tradition, the one that escaped not because there was no choice, but because the choice was unacceptable.

 

Even still, she misses it.

 

She misses the desert sands and the refreshing oasis’s and the way the sun danced across the river; she misses the cool silks and spicy foods and the elegant and poetic cadence of their speech. She longs for the feeling of belonging and relishes the comfort of nostalgia. Calormen was not without its beauty.

 

Yet she will not regret her decision (she will mourn decisions made along the way; the bitter tang of harshly spoken words, the deep scars of pride), but she ran to freedom, to that elusive hope in the northern sky, and she will not stop searching until she finds that for which she yearns.

 

She stays there, in the stone castle on a green plain, surrounded by mountains and streams, and she makes her own decisions and learns her own wisdom, and she makes this _her_ home. She learns to embrace the gentle poise of Archenland’s court, the earnestness of its people, and she melds it with the lessons she learned as a little girl under the harsh, unforgiving, beautiful Calormen heat until it becomes something of her very own (something forgiving, something honest, something graceful, built on the foundation of sweet grass and grey stone and swirling to the northern sky with cascading folds of gentle silk and time-honored poetry).

 

This is her home.


	6. Corin Thunderfist

It honestly amuses him that people might think he is somehow furious or jealous that Cor has been found.

Honestly.

He never wanted that usurped place. The title and position had not been his at birth and never should have been his through youth. He is no crown prince (he is certain the diplomacy of kingship would have wrecked him). No, he is not jealous; he is _joyous_.

He has a brother, finally and again, and he cannot imagine anything greater. He is free now: free to be the rebel prince; free to fight with his fists and laugh from his soul; free from the burden of leadership and poise. He is brother and son and twinkling eyes and booming voice and bloodied knuckles.

There is no jealousy circling in the depths of his heart. There is just passion and pride and love (for Archenland, for his father, for his brother, for his sister).

He is Corin, son of Lune, and he will not be king.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aesthetic tumblr post: http://adaperturamlibri.tumblr.com/post/139395353637/corin-thunder-fist-prince-of-archenland-it


	7. Crown Prince Cor of Archenland

He stands in front of the mirror, staring at a face which is no longer just his own. It now has its twin, its meaning, its home; it is framed by a thin band of gold—the symbol of a belonging, a duty, a birthright which was always his.

 

He is home (and home is something he cannot quite comprehend).

 

This is father and brother and green, rolling fields. This is magic and life and cool winds swirling around his head. This is mountains as far as he can see and a lion waiting somewhere beyond his eyes (and the remembrance of that keeps him from floundering. He would have failed, once, twice, again and again, but the lion kept him from the ledge, led him to Aravis, prevented him from being alone. He will not be abandoned now.)

 

He is a son and a brother, now and again, and a prince. He will be king, this illiterate, foreign fisherman’s slave, and he cannot fit his life’s pieces quite into place. He is rough and coarse, and yet his fingers are gentle, and this is familiar and this is _right._

 

He is no longer Shasta—he is Cor, son of Lune and someday, he will be king.


End file.
